People

Gianluca Fulli leads the "Smart Electricity Systems and Interoperability" group at the European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Energy and Transport, conducting research and providing scientific support to Community policies on power systems and smart grids.

He is an electrical engineer (1998, Università  La Sapienza, Italy) with combined industrial and research expertise on smart grids techno-economic assessment and power systems planning, operations and technologies. He previously worked with the Italian transmission system operator (GRTN/TERNA), where he was responsible for cross-border interconnectors planning and new generation connection, with the UK gas & electricity company (NGT) and with IBM.

He is involved in several research projects and initiatives on smart/power grids, including those linked with the European Strategic Energy Technology Plan, the Energy Infrastructure Package, the Trans-European Networks for Energy and the US-EU Energy Council.

Luigi Debarberis has always worked in R&D for energy, leading different Units of the Institute for Energy, including the Energy Security Unit.

Luigi has a Degree in Nuclear Engineering and a Post-Degree Specialization in Nuclear Energy and Alternative Energies at Politecnico di Torino, Italy.

Further, he gained a PhD at RRC-KI Kurchatov Institute, Moscow, Russia. He is Honorary Member of the Hungarian Academy of Engineering.

His main areas of interests and responsibility cover energy, security, storage, RES integration, role of nuclear, with special focus on distributed systems and smart grids.

Evangelos Kotsakis received his B.Sc. degree in computer science from the University of Athens, Greece, his M.Sc. and Ph.D degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Salford, England. He held visiting posts in the Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich, Switzerland and VTT Information Technology, Helsinki, Finland.

He joined European commission in 2004 and since then he has been working as scientific officer in the Joint Research Center at Ispra, Italy. His research interests include Smart Grid technology, System interoperability, ICT vulnerabilities and system simulations. He joined the "Smart Electricity Systems and Interoperability" Action in September 2012.

Anna Mengolini holds a MSc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Bologna and a MSc in Environmental Engineering from Politecnico of Torino. Her main professional experience has been in safety and risk assessment of major hazard installations (chemical, petrochemical and nuclear) gaining international experience both in the private and public sectors. Her interest has been in particular in human and social dimension of technology focusing her activities and research on human factors and organizational aspects in safety. She has presented and published her research in international conferences and journals.

In 2011 she joined the with the "Smart Electricity Systems and Interoperability" group at the European Commission, Institute of Energy and Transport, Joint Research Centre. where she works on policy support and research on Smart Grids. Her main areas of interest cover socio technical aspects and complexity of smart grids, social acceptance, consumer engagement, vulnerable consumers.

Philip Minnebo is an electromechanical engineer (process technology) displaying twenty year experience as research engineer, mainly in the field of materials characterization and laboratory management.

His main activities within the "Smart Electricity Systems and Interoperability" project are
- modeling and experimental activities: real-time modeling of smart grid power and control systems hardware-in-the-loop testing of smart grid advanced components (control and protection equipment, storage devices, ...)
- policy support research
- integration of Distributed Energy Resources in distribution grids (technological, regulatory and economic aspects)

Heinz Wilkening has a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Hannover. He has more than 15 years of working experience in research organizations and automotive industry.
He has worked on topics related to mechanical engineering in particular hydrogen safety studies with CFD for nuclear as well as non-nuclear applications. Further more he has experience in fuel cell and stack design and manufacturing (flow field design with CFD, development of a sealing concept for a stack, moulding of Bipolar plates) and testing.

He joined the "Smart Electricity Systems and Interoperability" project within the Energy Security Unit in 2010 and he is working on the following topics: modeling of electric grids, possibilities and challenges of smart grids, high temperature superconductors, energy storage e.g. flywheel.

Mircea Ardelean got his BSc in Geography at West University of Timisoara and holds a PhD degree from Babes-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania. He had previously worked in academics where his main attributes were teaching and research in the field of Cartography and GIS. He also contributed with his expertise in these fields to various local and regional development projects.

Since September 2012 he joined the "Smart Electricity Systems and Interoperability" team focusing on spatial data gathering, data consistency check, building geodatabases and map production.

Ilhami Colak graduated from the Department of Electrical and Electronics Education of Gazi University in 1985. He received his  Master of Science (MSc) Degree from the Institute of Science and Technology of Gazi University in 1988 and his Master of Philosophy (MPhil) Degree from the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering of Birmingham University in  Birmingham, UK in 1991 and his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Degree from the Department of Electrical Engineering of Aston University in Birmingham, UK in 1994. He became a full Professor at Gazi University in 2005. He served as a Head of Electrical and Electronics Engineering department, Director of Vocational High Schools. His main research area covers electrical machines, power electronics, distance education, artificial neural networks, alternating energy sources and automatic control. He has published around 40 research papers in SCI Journals and more than 110 international conference papers. He has been in organizing committee of 11 different international conferences. He is currently Editor-in-Chief of International Journal of Renewable Energy Research, IJRER.

He is currently working for European Commission Joint Research Center in Petten, Netherlands until May 1, 2014.

Carlo Brancucci Martínez-Anido holds a Master (M.Eng) in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Bristol (2009). In 2010, he joined the "Smart Electricity Systems and Interoperability" research group at the European Commission's JRC Institute for Energy and Transport as a Ph.D. student. His thesis is supervised by the Technology Policy and Management Faculty at the Technical University of Delft.

His main research interests are electricity transmission networks, electricity markets, renewable energy integration and network reliability. His recent publications have focused on cross-border electricity transmission and transmission network reliability indicators.

Aymen Chaouachi holds a B.S and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from the Ecole Supérieure de Science et Technologie de Tunis in 2004 and 2006, and a Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan, in 2011.

His research interests include renewable energy, control systems, artificial neural networks, fuzzy logic, power electronics, and smart grid. He worked as a lecturer in the Tunisian Ministry of Education and he have been also involved with several research projects on photovoltaic systems control and integration with the Tunisian Research and Technology Center of Energy. Before joining the EC-JRC "Smart Electricity Systems and Interoperability" team, he had industrial experience with Hitachi. Ltd Power System Company (Japan) where he was involved in research and development of interoperability, smart control and protection of substation automation within the IEC 61850 standard.

Catalin Covrig graduated with a Diplomat Engineer Degree (5 yrs) in Mechanical Engineering in 2008 and a Doctorate Degree related to the Energy domain in 2011, both from the University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania.

Before joining the "Smart Electricity Systems and Interoperability" group at the European Commission, Institute for Energy and Transport, Joint Research Centre in 2012 he was an Operations Engineer in the Cernavoda Nuclear Power Plant, Romania. During his studies he conducted research in the field of energy generation and supply, renewable energy and combustion systems modeling.

Stavros Lazarou works with the"Smart Electricity Systems and Interoperability" group at the European Commission, Joint Research Centre, Institute for Energy and Transport, focusing on modeling electricity transmission and distribution systems and supporting competitive research activities (FP7 projects).

His background is in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science [2005(diploma), 2010(PhD) University of Patras, Greece]. He had previously worked in the academia teaching Computer Networking, Data Communications, High Voltage Engineering and Electric Machines (Synchronous and Asynchronous). He published work related to Distributed Generation, Smart Grids, Transmission Networks and Fuel Cell modeling.

Chiara Tardioli has a master degree in Mathematics from the University of Pisa, Italy. She specialized in Dynamical Systems applied to space (outside the Earth) and she worked a couple of years inside academia computing the trajectories of asteroids and space debris.

Her main concern was the evolution in time of the distance between our planet and an asteroid and for this purpose she developed a piece of software using both innovative mathematics and efficient programming methods.

Now she is trainee at the JRC Smart Electricity Systems and Interoperability Action, studying the power and gas systems dynamics and supporting the development of tools for smart grid inventorying and assessment.

Julija Vasiljevska received her degree at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, University Sc. Cyril and Methodius, Skopje, majoring in Power Systems. She holds a Ph.D degree from the Faculty of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Porto in collaboration with INESC Porto. During this period she was actively involved in several European Commission funded projects focusing on large scale deployment of microgeneration and microgrids. Her research interests include optimization of power system operation, including microgeneration, microgrid operation, control strategies for microgrids deployment and multicriteria decision aid.

Since May 2012 she is with the "Smart Electricity Systems and Interoperability" group at the European Commission, Institute of Energy and Transport, Joint Research Centre.